


The Harder the Fall

by fyredancer



Category: Tokio Hotel
Genre: Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-24
Updated: 2014-01-24
Packaged: 2018-01-09 21:10:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1150823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fyredancer/pseuds/fyredancer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While bored on tour, Gustav puts a series of pranks into action, reveling in the fact that his plan has a built-in fall guy. However, you have to get up pretty early in the morning to put one over on a Kaulitz, no matter how smart you are...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Harder the Fall

Gustav finished feeding the last of the thick, card stock quality paper through the small laser printer, nodding with satisfaction as the final image printed in crisp black lines on a wash of sepia. He was a man on a mission. Much as Tom and even Georg tended to spend hours on their laptops during free time or shuttling from place to place, Gustav had found a particular niche over the past few years. He found the quirky sites, the off-beat and the outlandish, the sarcastic flow-charts and snarky corners of the internet that brought a warm glow to the cockles of his black and hardened heart.

 

It wasn't that he was a bad person, Gustav reassured himself, as he clipped each image from the card stock, wielding gleaming shears with precision. He had grown somewhat weary and cynical over the ten years of screeching girls throwing their underwear at a pair of pretty boys and a hobbit with Pantene-ad perfect hair while he was arguably the best catch of the band. The twins blew all their money on Ferraris and amusement parks, Georg had bad habits culminating in gambling sprees and drunken trawls of stripper bars, and Gustav was more than confident he was the only member of Tokio Hotel with a diversified portfolio worth millions.

 

He was inured to fame's siren call. Photo shoots bored him, interviews with the same three set lists of questions bored him, girls trying to flash their breasts at Tom and Bill bored him... Gustav appreciated something new. Dry humor, piercing wit. Not the same five tired jokes Tom trotted out whenever there was a camera on him.

 

For a solid week, Gustav had been going through every category of the latest site he'd stumbled over until his brilliant idea occurred. The best factor in his airtight plan was that it had a built-in scapegoat. Everyone figured Gustav for the quiet one, the reader, too wrapped up in navel-gazing and a good online newspaper to stoop to something so low as practical jokes.

 

Gustav adjusted his glasses with thumb and forefinger and squared off his pile of cards, tapping them on the desk and nodding with satisfaction. He plucked the top one from the file and headed for the makeup artist area, unobtrusive as a shadow – or a really good concierge. He was tempted to think of himself as a ninja, but that was far too flashy – not his style.

 

It was time to deploy the first card, and lie in wait for the fruition of his plan.

* * *

Natalie bustled into the makeup area, setting down a few packages and damning Bill under her breath for going and getting a tan and making her job that extra bit harder. He refused to let her stop at the jawline, either; she had to blend all the way down his neck and into the collar of whatever he was wearing. Combined with the fact that he didn't like to be touched and tried to spend as little time in the chair as possible, as sweet as he was he could be a bit of a pain in the ass.

 

She reached for a cup of brushes, flipping over a small note-type card in passing.

 

With a frown, Natalie picked up the card. Bill must have left it for her, or...

 

 

"Tom!" Natalie hollered, turning from the makeup table. Her heels clicked furiously enough over the concrete floor that she never heard the soft snigger in her wake as she slammed out of the door and went in search of their resident prankster.

 

"We have had this conversation before!" Natalie yelled, storming up to the young guitarist and waving the card in his general direction. "I am not a MTLF, or a BLT, or whatever ridiculous sex-related acronym you're using these days..."

 

Tom paused mid-swig of Coke and looked guilty, which was enough to confirm Natalie's assessment that Tom had placed the card.

 

She tossed it at him and the sepia card fluttered to the floor. "So for the last time, give it a rest and start hitting on girls your own age!"

 

"But you've got much more experience, and sex appeal," Tom protested, bending to snatch the card up. His brow creased. "I didn't leave this for you."

 

Natalie snorted. "Sure, the innocent act. Next you'll be telling me you're as virginal as Bill." She waved vaguely toward the other twin, who was perusing a fashion magazine and didn't even bother to look up, raising a finger in salute to her sally.

 

"I didn't do it," Tom insisted.

 

"Right," Natalie said. "Well, make sure to 'not' do it to someone else next time, or I'll have a word with someone faster than you can say it's not sexual harassment."

 

"It's not..." Tom trailed off forlornly, as Natalie stormed off.

 

"Something wrong?" Gustav wondered, coming into the room as Natalie swept past him with a brief, professional baring of teeth. The light glinted off his glasses and his face was impassive, betraying nothing.

 

"Eh," Tom said, flipping the card between dexterous fingers. "I think Georg is trying to frame me."

 

"Because you make it so difficult," Bill contributed absently.

 

Tom regarded the card and smirked. "It's not bad, wish I'd thought of it first."

* * *

Georg had a habit of scoping out bathrooms thoroughly at any venue they played or place they planned on spending more than half an hour, due to long association with the twin terrors known by others as Kaulitz. He checked available toilet paper, he made sure seat covers were available, he swiped surfaces for super glue or some other potentially embarrassing products – one time it had been lube, another time Nutella, and even bubble gum had made an appearance – and he even checked the tank. Georg knew it wasn't paranoia when they _were_ frequently getting him.

 

Today he locked the door, began to check out the cubicle, and found the lid down.

 

No one ever left the lid down except for Tom, who was even more fussy than Bill about odor and the potential escape of germs.

 

Frowning, Georg bent to open the toilet lid and found a printed sepia-toned card.

 

 

Georg sighed and slipped it into his pocket. He couldn't even say veiled sexual come-ons were a new one, but at least Tom was trying to be creative.

 

After taking care of his business and remaining wary for any traps considering there was evidence of Tom having gone before, Georg sought out the informal gathering area where the twins had been camping for the past few hours.

 

"Okay, ha ha, very funny, Tom," Georg said, digging the card out of his pocket.

 

Tom glanced up, already smirking, mute support that he'd planted the card as suspected. "Well, if I did it, of course it was brilliant..."

 

"...but there's such a thing as taking bromance too far," Georg said, smirking right back. "Come on, think what my girlfriend would say."

 

Tom blinked in very well-orchestrated confusion, reaching up with a monkey-long arm to snatch the card out of Georg's fingers.

 

"I didn't leave this for you," Tom claimed.

 

Georg rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right. It's your method, Kaulitz."

 

"No, really, I didn't!" Tom insisted.

 

"Please," Georg said, taking the card right back. He pointed at the text as though Tom were too dumb to read the printed words for himself. "Pre-flight pat-downs? You're the only one who ever gets singled out, mister I have enough metal in my pants to get the metal detector to come to me, rather than the other way around. You've got to stop sticking foil-wrapped cucumbers down your shorts."

 

"Shut up," Tom said, flushing and obviously regretting ever having watched Spinal Tap with Georg. "If I didn't do it, I didn't do it."

 

"Whatever," Georg said, rolling his shoulders. It wasn't the first time he'd been pranked – and of course, it wasn't the first time Tom had denied it.

 

He had to admire the man's commitment to the lie.

 

Tom watched open-mouthed as Georg left. After a moment, he turned his head. "If it wasn't Georg setting me up, then who?"

 

Bill's noncommittal hum indicated his disinterest. "I'm not getting involved," he proclaimed. "You've brought this on yourself."

* * *

Dunja opened her portfolio, picked up the slip of card that fell out of it, and sighed.

 

"Damn it, Tom!"

 

She fanned herself with the card as she headed for the green room, which fortunately had been where she was heading to begin with.

 

The boys looked up as she bustled through the door.

 

"Tom," Dunja said crisply, seating herself beside him and reaching for his knee, but setting it on her own as she remembered to respect his personal boundaries at the last. "It's one thing to give this card out to me, because I know you haven't actually seen a naked pair since that mid-teen traumatic experience of yours, but you'd better not be handing these out to other women on the team..."

 

"Wait, hand out what?" Tom said, giving her a convincing dumb look.

 

Dunja displayed the card she'd found in her portfolio.

 

 

Tom frowned at it, transferred his gaze to her, and gave a slow blink. "I didn't--"

 

"Save it," Dunja snapped, standing and smoothing her pantsuit down.

 

"No, really, I..."

 

"You have to admit," Dunja said, dropping the card in his lap. "It's your M.O."

 

"Well, yes," Tom said, leaning back in his seat, brow knotting. "But you know how quick I am to take credit when I've pulled one over..."

 

"Unless you want to keep doing it," Dunja said. She shook a finger at him until his eyes crossed. "Enough, or I'm taking this up the food chain."

 

Tom cast his hands up, glaring around the room where Gustav was drumming on his knees, ignoring everyone, Bill was touching up his lips with a hand mirror, and Georg was smirking as he watched Tom get taken down a peg. "Fine, you've got it!" he said loudly. "I won't plant anymore cards." He sat back on the couch and actually pouted up at her.

 

"Great," Dunja said. "And try not to make any dick jokes in this upcoming conference if you can help it."

 

"I'm not promising anything," Tom replied, sullen.

 

Dunja squared her shoulders. "Boys, we're on in five. Now, there's a few things I want to discuss before you go on..."

* * *

The next one required careful timing.

 

They were sitting down to a post-practice dinner of pizza, the works for Georg and Gustav, mushroom and olive for the twins, when Tom's phone began to bounce and sing "Hit Me Baby One More Time."

 

"Tell Jost I'm not doing anything between now and the Comets," Bill warned him, scooping at least half of the mushroom and olive slices onto his plate while Tom's back was turned.

 

Tom waved him off, lifting the phone to his ear. "All-Occasions Undertakers, you drop 'em, we stuff 'em."

 

"If I didn't know you better," Jost said, not bothering with a greeting or a commentary on Tom's unconventional opener. "I'd say you were coming onto me with that card you just sent."

 

"Uh, what?" Tom stated, pulling his phone away and staring at it as though he'd found a live rattlesnake in his hand. "Ewww, someone sent you one of those cards? I don't even know where you _are_ right now!"

 

"France," Jost replied. "Please. All you have to do is hand something to a PA and they mail it for you."

 

"Well, that's true," Tom said, chewing at his lip. "So what card did you get?"

 

"Hold on, I'll send it to you...now," Jost told him.

 

Tom's phone chimed and he held it up, squinting.

 

"Shit."

 

 

"You haven't lost your touch," Jost told him.

 

"But I haven't even...argh!" Tom exclaimed, palming his forehead. "Thank you. Yes. I appreciate you not sexting me, by the way."

 

"You're not my type," Jost responded, deadpan. "Tell Bill if he'd like to fit one in—"

 

"He wouldn't," Tom interrupted.

 

"Fine, I'll email him the details."

 

"Jost—"

 

"And don't send those cards to anyone else, got it?" Jost remonstrated. "Not everyone gets your sense of humor."

 

"Screw you," Tom said. "I'll send them to everyone, then." Jost ought to know him better than that.

 

He thumbed the phone off without waiting for a response. This was getting out of hand.

 

"Gustav," Tom said slowly, as he turned to face his bandmates.

 

The drummer's glasses glinted, opaque in the light for an instant as he turned his head toward Tom.

 

"Have you seen anyone handing out those little sepia cards that have been getting me in trouble?" he asked.

 

Gustav pursed his lips, knit his brow, and shook his head.

 

"Ah," Tom said, crestfallen. If the most observant member of their band hadn't noticed anything, then Tom was going to have to put his detective's cap on.

 

If only he could find it.

* * *

"Okay," Bill said, dropping a sepia-toned card on Tom's thigh. "I know you're hot for me, but this? Is just weird."

 

Tom paused his hand-held video game and gaped up at him. "What the--" he sputtered, shaking his head in slow revolutions. "Wrong on so many levels, Bill."

 

"You're telling me!" Bill said, gesturing at the card.

 

Tom's gaze dipped and he screwed his tongue into his lip bolt.

 

 

"Huh," Tom said, brow knitting as he looked around the jumble of bags and equipment and costume racks that comprised their dressing room slash equipment holding area slash waiting room.

 

"Yeah, 'huh,' and nice of you to bring that memory up, by the way; it was the _one_ time, and nothing even--"

 

"Bill," Tom interrupted his brother, looking past the nearest rack of bagged clothing to pin a gimlet eye on Georg, phone cupped to his mouth with a stupid half-grin on his face, pass him up, and land on Gustav, studiously reading a newspaper. "Who all knew about that incident?"

 

Bill huffed and batted a strand of unsprayed black hair out of his eyes. "Well, you of course, and Georg, and Gustav, and Tobi--"

 

"And that was it?" Tom cut in, trying to remember whether someone would have told David.

 

"Yeah, of course. It was stupid, and Tobi didn't want to get into trouble, so..."

 

"I'm taking this," Tom informed him, and grabbed up the card from his lap.

 

"Oh, fine, yell something cryptic and run off!" Bill accused behind his back. "I'll get you for this, Tom, and it won't be wet Haribos in your bunk this time. Oh, no. It's going to be something like Splenda and decaf!"

 

Tom waved a hand over his shoulder to indicate he'd heard, because nothing infuriated his twin like lack of acknowledgment. He thought he knew where this was going, now, even if he didn't know what the end-game was...and it was time to set a trap.

* * *

“Tom cap, Tom cap, looking for my Tom cap,” Tom mumbled under his breath, tapping his pack of cigarettes against his leg and poking his head in the dressing room area before making another pass up the hall. “Anyone seen my Tom cap?”

 

Securing a no, Tom checked two other likely places and returned to the waiting room area where his bandmates tended to cluster right before they were to go live. Bill was getting the last touches to his makeup done after the carpet walk, Georg was off doing big business, so that only left...

 

Clicking his tongue against his teeth, Tom poked through the room and glanced at his open laptop before finding his Tom cap wedged in a corner of the couch. “Huh,” he said, unsurprised to find a sepia card lurking in the depths of the cap. “Someone's left a card for Tom in the Tom cap. Someone who is apparently well acquainted with Tom's sexy.” He held it up between thumb and forefinger so that it could be seen over his shoulder.

 

 

“Possibly someone who knows Tom's habit of talking in the third person is a sign of narcissism,” Gustav spoke up from the other side of the couch, folding down his paper. He turned a calm appraising look on Tom through his glasses.

 

“Of course,” Tom agreed cheerfully. “Why do you think Tom loves Bill best?” He turned from Gustav to his laptop, bringing the monitor alive with a touch of his finger to the wide metallic pad.

 

“Hey,” Gustav said, brows knitting. “You left your computer on?”

 

“I got everything on camera,” Tom said smugly, bringing up the webcam application. “So let's rewind this a touch and find out who's been tarnishing Tom's good name, hmm?”

 

“Good name, pfft,” Gustav responded. “I thought the webcam has a little light that goes on...”

 

“Tom taped over it,” Tom replied, putting up a fist in triumph. “Nothing to get in the way of getting the culprit caught on camera.”

 

“Huh, aren't you firing with both lobes today,” Gustav commented.

 

Tom leveled a puzzled look in his direction.

 

“Never mind,” Gustav said with a sigh. “Let's see it, then.” He got up from the couch as though to give Tom a hand with the laptop.

 

“Stay back, you...you snake in the grass,” Tom told him, holding out a hand spread wide. “Why do you hate me? Even Bill thought I was some kind of creepy pervert.”

 

“Well, Tom, you a--”

 

“Don't say it,” Tom interjected fiercely. “It really was you.” He paused the webcam on a particularly clear image of Gustav, head lowered, hand outstretched to drop the card in Tom's upturned cap.

 

“Not that creepy,” Gustav amended. “Honestly? I was doing it because the cards were fun, and I was bored. The fact that you got blamed for it...that was an unintentional side-effect.”

 

Tom stared at him during the confession, expressionless. At last, he said, “That's it?”

 

“That was it,” Gustav said with a shrug.

 

“How many of those cards do you still have stashed away?”

 

“Yours was the last,” Gustav admitted.

 

Tom grinned at him. “You're a frightening man, Juschtel. You just reminded me why we don't prank you, only Georg.”

 

“Ah, well,” Gustav said, and kept a straight face. “Georg's got it coming.”

* * *

Gustav was trying to use his intellect for the greater good, these days. There was a sexy only somewhat older lady on the catering staff with great breasts and a scintillating smile that transformed her face from decent to knockout.

 

“I can't believe you,” Tom hissed, bumping into him hard on the catering line. “Who's the perv now? She's got to be twice our age.”

 

“Weren't you telling Natalie that the experience is what makes her hot?” Gustav countered.

 

“That is just how I talk to Natalie,” Tom sniffed. “She hasn't seemed to figure out yet that I'm not going to follow through.”

 

Amused, Gustav withheld a retort on Tom being _unable_ to follow through and sidled further up the line. He was concentrating on holding his plate steady for the portion that was being served out, so didn't much notice when Tom bumped into him harder, making him jostle the table and causing Gerda to drop an overly-generous share on his plate.

 

“Sorry,” Gustav apologized, holding Gerda's eyes instead of flicking an irritated glance Tom's way, as he would prefer.

 

“No problem,” the brunette replied with a nod, her eyes crinkling in that incredible smile. As Gustav began to move on, wanting to be considerate and not hold up the line, she called after him. “Wait – I think you dropped something.”

 

With a rising sense of dread, Gustav reached out to grab at the card before Gerda could pluck it from the cloth-draped folding table. The woman was faster, though, picking it up and turning it over in one hand to read it.

 

Her brow creased, then she handed it over with a bewildered smile. “Oh. Um. Unless you meant that for me.”

 

Gustav accepted the card and glanced at it, suppressing an inward groan.

 

 

“That's not mine,” he said with quiet desperation, but the damage had been done. Gerda had already dismissed him with her attitude, by the way she turned from him and gave Bill that bright smile, Bill on whom it was utterly wasted.

 

“Tom,” Gustav growled, stalking toward the table where Tom was crammed in beside Georg, elbowing him in the side as he took a great big bite of lunch and gave Gustav very wide, ostensibly innocent eyes. Georg looked back and forth between them, already smirking as though preparing to be amused. “You found the site?”

 

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” Tom claimed smoothly, but a grin lurked at the corners of his dancing eyes.

 

“Payback--” Gustav began.

 

“Might be hard to manage, considering I've got video evidence of _you_ leaving those little love notes,” Tom replied. He held up a hand in the high-five position as Bill took the chair beside him.

 

Bill gave him five automatically and cast an inquisitive gaze around the table. “What are we celebrating?”

 

“My awesome sauce,” Tom claimed, hurrying on when Georg choked, “because I got Gustav, who apparently thought he could get _me_.”

 

“No, everyone else,” Gustav said, resigning himself to taking a seat at last. “You were just the fall guy.”

 

“Better luck next time,” Tom said, waggling his brows and devoting his attention to the meal.

 

Gustav said goodbye to the prospect of Gerda and made a mental note to have two extra thick medium-rare steaks sent up to Tom's room next time they had a hotel night. He had his suspicions that the elder Kaulitz was vegetarian only so long as Bill was in the room. “You'll get yours,” he said vaguely, already mapping out a few avenues of attack.

 

He dismissed the notion of vengeance in the next moment. Tom had gotten some of his back, after all, after taking the brunt of Gustav's card campaign for weeks. Now it would be all kinds of fun to watch a nervous Tom bracing himself for potential retaliation, never quite able to relax when it didn't come.

 

Now that was revenge served Gustav-style. Tom would do all the work for him.

 

Gustav rubbed his hands together, eyes gleaming eagerly before he attacked his breakfast with vigor.

 

“Bill,” Tom said, already sounding worried. “He's eating very vengefully.”

 

“Mm-hmm, you don't start something you're not ready to finish when it comes to Gustav, Tom,” Bill replied. “I'd live in fear if I were you.”

 

Gustav settled back into his chair, serene in his assurance that Tom's imagination would do the rest. The bigger the ego...


End file.
